


High Society

by asuralucier



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous Timeline but set sometime after MAG 065, Fake Dating kind of, I miss university, I still haven't properly met Georgie yet so she's just mentioned, M/M, Oxford, Snark, Social Secretary!Jon is hilarity that just writes itself, Up for interpretation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24057160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: What Tim had really meant to say was: “No thanks, I’d rather have a curry and a wank.” But somehow, the words that left his mouth were: “Okay, yeah, I guess.”Not a ringing endorsement of his new Friday night plans, but an agreement was an agreement and Tim found himself next to Jon on a train to Oxford, scheduled arrival 17:35.Jon needs a date to a society dinner at Oxford. There is no love lost between himself and Tim, but Archival Assistants are a starving breed. Plus, Tim is good with people.What could go wrong?
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Tim Stoker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 126





	High Society

**Author's Note:**

> Caveats: I didn’t attend Oxford so details are probably wrong, but to my knowledge most common rooms have really old chesterfields that people have sex and snog on. Also the 1908 Society is made up and patterned after some alumni events that are exclusive to those who have served on the student exec/government committee. 
> 
> For maximum Britishness, read St. John as Sinjin. I swear, it still weirds me out. 
> 
> It is canon that Tim went to “Trinity College,” and I assumed Cambridge without further evidence since I didn’t want to send him to Dublin and there isn’t a Trinity College London.

“What are you doing this Friday?” 

Tim looked up at him with no small amount of suspicion, mobile in hand. More or less, Jon was used to it by now. Finally, Tim sighed and sat up straighter in his chair, clearing his throat. He said, “Where would you like me to speak into now, boss? That bulge in your breast pocket?” 

Jon stood his ground. “I’m not recording this.” 

“The hell you’re not,” Tim murmured, “I don’t know what I’m doing on Friday. Maybe I’ll get a curry in and masturbate.” 

Sometimes, because Jon was ever more aware of it now, of the strange heavy air that surrounded him whenever he thought about leaving the Institute rooting him in place, the opposite was true: he didn’t really want to in the same room as Timothy Stoker and he wanted to flee. 

Tim was still looking at him. “Wow, you’re really not recording this. Okay, then no, I’m afraid I’m not free to help you bury a body.” 

“Tim—”

“Just tell me what you want, all right?” 

“I’m a member of the 1908 Society at Balliol,” Jon said. Once he’d launched into it, he already felt more comfortable. It was like reading a statement for the record, following a rhythm he knew well. This was not to say that Jon had a speech prepared. “There are these bi-annual dinners, open to people who’ve served on the exec and their guests. Sometimes MPs or whatever do show up so they get an outside caterer.” 

“O-kay.” Tim was looking him up and down with now slightly renewed interest. “Thanks for the prospectus. You still haven’t told me what you want.” 

Jon would have thought that the implication was clear from that spiel, but Tim was obviously determined to make him work for it. He didn’t exactly blame the guy. “I’d rather—I mean, it’s. I’d like for you to come with me. If transportation’s a problem, I’ll spring for your ticket. I kind of can’t be the only person who shows up without a.” 

“A?” 

“Date.” Jon forced the word out in a painful rush of air. He half expected Tim to burst out laughing at that. But it would appear that Tim was just as flummoxed as Jon was at his request, given that his stare turned several degrees. Jon took Tim’s silence as a further opportunity to shore up his ask. 

“Not that you’d be my date in the traditional sense, of course, I wouldn’t expect you to...do that.” Besides, there was that sticking point of them not liking either overly much. Still, food was a great unifier, and that was all Jon really wanted. For Tim to come eat some food that was certainly going to be better than a takeaway curry and maybe to hate him slightly less. 

“I…” Tim sucked in a deep breath and then let it out. “Okay, yeah. I guess.” 

*

What Tim had really meant to say was: “No thanks, I’d rather have a curry and a wank.” But somehow, the words that left his mouth were: “Okay, yeah, I guess.” 

Not a ringing endorsement of his new Friday night plans, but an agreement was an agreement and he found himself next to Jon on a train to Oxford, scheduled arrival 17:35. If nothing else, It felt good to leave work early, for once. The weird sandy _unclean_ sense that trailed him around the Archives while he was there was less, but still present. 

Tim tried not to think about it. Jon, in his infinite wisdom, had booked them on a commuter train, which meant they had seats, but the spaces seemed narrower than usual with other passengers crowding in from the aisle, and it was almost easy to think of the sticky feeling as something else. 

Or maybe Jon had done it on purpose. 

“Anyway,” Jon said, drawing Tim out of his thoughts. “Thanks for coming.” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“I’ve been going alone for the last three,” Jon responded, although Tim hardly asked. Tim wasn’t the type of bloke who went anywhere trying to have a terrible time. Life was too short for that, but also Tim didn’t want to know about Jon’s personal life any more than he had to, if Jon even had one. “It gets a bit.” 

“Then why go? You don’t _have_ to go,” Tim said. “You clearly don’t _want_ to go, so don’t...go? Is it that hard?” 

Judging by the strangled sort of look that passed through Jon’s face like a withering storm cloud, yes, it maybe was that hard and now Tim really didn’t want to know. He was about to open his mouth to say as much, but Jon beat him to it. “Did you have a nice time at uni?” 

“Probably?” Tim hedged. That bit of his life was actively a blur. “I punted a lot, snogged a lot, drank a lot. Some of it was probably nice.” He wondered why Jon was even asking. 

“Yet you still found time to get a First,” Jon said. 

The fact that Jon had looked up his degree was not surprising given everything else Jon had been doing recently. But what Tim wasn’t expecting was a compliment to come out of that. It caught him off guard. “I did a lot of my snogging in the library. You know.” 

Jon’s face said he didn’t, and then things were back to normal again. 

Tim changed the subject. “Wait, who even _were_ you on the exec? Let me guess, Environment and Charities rep?” 

*

“Wouldn’t you believe,” said Molly Harper-St. John, who worked as an actress and also maybe a stripper; she left it deliberately vague and Tim was happy to draw his own conclusions. “That Jonny here organised _the best_ piss-ups around town. It was always over-subscribed and we had to start doing it twice a week.” 

That Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, who couldn’t even be bothered to plan office birthday properly (not that anyone was much into birthdays except for maybe Martin, but then Martin liked everything) was Soc Sec of his college was this side of baffling. 

On his other side, Jon was suddenly very interested in his lamb, poking at the fatty bits of it with his fork. He was even a bit pink around the ears. Jon mumbled something and Tim leaned in, putting an elbow meaningfully near his boss’s ribs. 

“What’s that?” 

Jon said, barely louder than before, “I said I just kept a spreadsheet.” 

Tim held back a snort. “Of course you did.” 

Molly was peering at them again with some interest. “How long have you been dating, anyway?” 

Tim blanched into his glass of wine. He tried to remember what he was drinking and couldn’t. He’d gone halves with Jon on a bottle of something recommended by a twenty-year-old who worked in the cellar. Trinity had had one too, but it’d been a while since Tim had spent more than a tenner on a bottle and the experience was just jarring. 

Instead of dismissing Molly’s statement as absurd and more to the point, patently untrue, Jon kept poking at his lamb. At this rate, he was probably going to give himself trypophobia. So much for “not a date in the traditional sense.” A majority of Jon’s current predicaments could probably be solved if he gave in to his paranoia in a slightly healthier way. Tim was hardly the poster child for this, but at least he gave it a go. 

Tim put down his fork and gestured between Jon and himself and raised a pointed eyebrow at Molly. He said, “You think we’re dating?” Tim didn’t know whether he ought to be offended. 

Molly stared back with her chin tilted at an angle. She didn’t say anything for the next apparently made a big enough deal out of it (after all, she was an _actress_ ) that other people started to fade out of their respective conversations to join in. 

This was possibly done on purpose on Molly’s part, or an unfortunate consequence of the other conversations around the table being simply boring. Tim hadn’t been listening particularly hard, but he thought he caught something about small business finance options. Fine if that was your thing, fucking dull otherwise. 

Molly’s date for the evening was Dom, a mousy-everythinged young man (even his sult was a suspicious shade of field mouse-brown), he’d been at St. Cross nearby instead of Balliol but he was damn near religious about attending Jon’s piss-ups. 

“Even if they always did start at the Eagle,” Dom said. To Tim, he gave an exaggerated, almost conspiratorial wink. “It’s got a bit of an old man vibe. Don’t know if you’ve been.” 

“Haven’t,” said Tim with a shrug, “but it doesn’t surprise me.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with the Eagle,” Jon said, recovering a little, but still not in the way Tim would have liked. 

“Anyway.” Molly cut in. “We never know if Jonny is dating anyone. We only found out that he and Georgie were a thing after catching them trying to do something on the chesterfield that once. Oh, and then she left for a term and bullied Jonny into being Social Sec.” 

“...Snogging?” Tim tried, and enjoyed every moment of Jon trying to shrink even more into his gown. 

“Eh, that’s one interpretation, mate,” said Dom, pulling a face that might be one of several things. “Hey, Jon, where _is_ Georgie, anyway?” 

“We don’t really talk,” Jon said, with obvious effort, like he was constipated somehow. “But she never comes to these things, you know that.” 

But Jon still came to these things even if this elusive “Georgie” didn’t. What that was supposed to say about him Tim had no idea. At this point, Tim was ready to tip the scales and say that Jon wasn’t even trying to be weird. It was probably the exact opposite. The more Jon was trying not to be weird and to figure things out, the weirder he got. But at university, everybody was weird in one way or the other. 

Hell, maybe this was why Jon kept coming to these things even if he couldn’t get a damn date. Before Tim could change his mind, he leaned over and kissed Jon very primly by the shell of his ear and he felt the other man stiffen, as if he was trying not to rocket out of his chair. 

“But yeah, not long I guess. We’re still interpreting too,” said Tim, keeping an iron grip on Jon’s elbow. “Honestly, I only came tonight because Jon said he‘d take me clubbing.” 

*

With not a small amount of port, Brie, and Stilton in his system, plus the personal card of a certain crossbencher—in maybe more ways than one, again, it was something else left deliberately vague and again, Tim drew his own conclusions—in his pocket, Tim concluded that the evening was in fact, not a waste of time. 

Standing outside in the smoking area, Tim sucked in a deep breath and was surprised that the air smelled clean and didn’t stick to the inside of his lungs like the air inside the Archives even though the cramped space meant he was pretty much standing shoulder to shoulder with other people out for a tab. 

There was the poppy thrum of music coming from inside of the club, Wahoo. Jon said it was his first time in, which spurred Molly, Dom, and a few others to buy him a treble shot of something actually lethal. 

Tim was exchanging meaningful gazes with a young lady with a nose ring when Jon reappeared. There was a wet spot on his left sleeve. 

Tim said, motioning, “What happened to you?” 

“I spilled my drink.” 

“Accidentally,” Tim supplied, and it wasn’t a question.

“Something like that.” Jon looked set to inhale a deep breath, but then he looked around and seemed to change his mind. “Thought I’d make my escape before they could buy me a new one. The bar is rammed.” 

“I still hate you,” said Tim, after a moment had passed. “In case you’re wondering.” 

“I know,” Jon said; unlike before, he didn’t sound defensive, like he was again gearing up to accuse Tim of murder, now he just sounded resigned. Maybe that was a step forward. “But now you’ll have something to hold against me too. I thought...that might make you feel better.” 

“Make me—” Tim interrupted himself before he could give Jon’s reasoning any further thought. There were many reasons to not go down that road, and he was content to do that, without dwelling on any of them too much. But he also needed Jon to stop talking because he didn’t make any sense. 

So Tim pulled Jon to him, jostling a bystander behind them and kissed him before he could convince himself it was a bad idea. It’d shocked Jon once, and maybe he could do it again. Come to think of it, maybe it was a very good thing Jon hadn’t had the treble because that meant he still tasted like port. 

“What—”

“One, in case someone comes looking for us,” said Tim. “And two, please shut up.” 

“Oh.” They were still standing very close together and Jon didn’t pull away. Tim was going to pretend that Jon thought he had a point. Two could play at this game and Tim was usually pretty good at this sort of thing. “Well, we can leave now. They’ve probably forgotten about me. Oasis just came on, I guess it’s kind of a thing.” 

“Really.” 

Jon’s hand slid down the sleeve of Tim’s suit (a hangover from his old job, which meant it was nice), and just for a fleeting second, touched the edge of Tim’s wrist before stepping away. 

Jon said, “I know a good takeaway. It’s on the way to the station. Haven't been there for a while, but I remember they do a decent korma.” 

Tim shrugged. A curry to take home didn’t sound like a terrible idea, even coming from Jon. He went and stubbed his cigarette out in a nearby ashtray and was set again to follow Jon’s lead. “Yeah, that sounds all right.”


End file.
